Originally Posted by
cvarming
That would be cool. There is about 80 miles from McGuire AFB to Manhattan and a lot less to Philadelphia. How about a massive airport there, and some truly high speed rail service (e.g. maglev) to NYC and PHL. We could get the Manhattan-airport transfer time down to 20 minutes and airport-Philadelphia down to 10. That would be a real project.
If you were designing an air transit system from scratch, this is probably how you would build it. Massive regional super-airports in strategic locations with true high-speed train service to area center-city stations that then connect to local mass transit. For those who needed even more rapid service to center-city, helicopter express service would provide an option.
The problem is that we're not designing a system from scratch and the transition costs from our system to one that relied on regional super-hubs would be extraordinary.